Happy For You
by Tabbyluna
Summary: It started out with a crush. How could she end up like this? Coughing, bleeding, the cycle repeats. But will she live? Will she even breath?


It started with a whisper. Hardly the big bang she had expected to feel when she would first fall in love. It came at her gently. Softly. With the silence of a skilled thief. She had never expected to catch feelings like this. And certainly not with one of her friends and fellow allies to the Skylanders. It had all started out lukewarm, but as the days went by and she spent more of her time with Flynn, her emotions soon started to boil her alive. Soon, every joke he cracked made her laugh. Every smile of his made her heart beat a little faster. His mere presence was enough to cast a rose-coloured tint over life, even through the dullest routines and the riskiest adventures. During the day, she dreamed of him. In her dreams, she fantasised about him.

He thought he was charismatic, stylish, and oh so handsome. And she agreed with him in those regards. Cali rolled her eyes at his jokes, but she would always laugh silently with him. Hugo nagged at him for foolishness, but his bravery always made her heart swell with admiration. Mags teased him for his ego, but she could not help but find his pridefulness charming. Slowly, she allowed herself to be dragged deeper and deeper. Falling for him felt bottomless, and her curious spirit wanted to explore further. It was very teenage of her. Hardly what one would expect a chieftess to feel like. Yet, she sank and she fell. Sensations like a beating heart and a flushed face became familiar to her. It was dizzying, it was drowning. Scary and dreadful and euphoric.

And then one day, she coughed out a daffodil.

She did not feel well that day. Woodburrow's doctor was called. She had been coughing for most of the day, so he recommended lots of water and bed rest. But neither of those things stopped her from choking, heaving, and hacking her day away. So she spent the day dizzy and unwell. Having what seemed like a hundred coughing fits. But in the quiet of the evening, her lungs produced the first of the golden yellow flowers. Empty tissue boxes lined her bedside table, and her stomach felt like it was about to pull itself out. But something pushed itself right up her throat. Into her mouth. Onto her hand. She saw the tiny clump of yellow petals, smashed inside her palm. Mixed with her bile and her spit. It was as if time stopped for her. Though it was hard to breath, she felt the need to suck in deep breaths. She gulped, which only served to tickle her throat.

She spent many days of her youth holed up in the Woodburrow Library reading. There, she read almost every book in it. The factoids and information garnered from the activity were all locked away in her mind, like precious jewellery in a jewellery box. And she distinctly remembered reading about this ailment somewhere. Hanahaki disease. A rare, but fatal illness. A person, a victim of unrequited love, was to cough out flowers until they confessed their true feelings. If not, they would die painfully. Those flowers would clog up their lungs and heart, filling arteries with petals and veins with pollen. Until one day, the victim would give way and fade away.

Tessa knew that she had to fix it. Death would not get her so easily. It could not. For the rest of the night, until the wee hours in the morning, she toiled on a confession. She crafted a script, and made a paper heart. Flynn may not reciprocate her emotions. But that did not mean she was hopeless. Though she did feel more tired than usual while working. As if a small voice was whispering doubts and fears at her. But she could ignore that voice, and her hands still pushed on to create.

The next day, he came to visit. With news for everyone, or at least news for her. He went on his first date with Cali last night. He told her all about it. There was no detail he did not elaborate on; there was scrumptious food (specifically candied apples), lovely music (Specifically big band), and lots of dancing (and they were both great dancers). She grinned and bore it. They both seemed happy, after all. A voice in her head nagged at her to let him have his fun. The speech went unspoken. The paper heart was tossed into a wastepaper basket. She spent the evening unable to eat. More petals were coughed up, and they were thrown away with the heart. It hurt, but she tried to be happy for him.

The dates became more frequent. Flynn told her about each and every one. She smiled at him, and heard every detail dutifully. Though she always excused herself to use the bathroom when he came by. Waves upon waves of flowers would be thrown up. The petals and leaves - and on many occasions the blood - would be flushed down but not forgotten about. Once she was finished, she would sit with him and grin. Smile. Hear about the dances. All the pink-and-golden sunsets and the walks that she wanted to have alongside him. Then an excuse would be whispered. She needed the bathroom again. Thus once again she would take off and just heave and cough her lungs out. Too many leaves. Too many petals. Too much blood sometimes, and too much spit. She feared for her life. She tried to be happy for both of her friends, but her fear always threatened to overshadow her love for them.

She knew the disease was dragging her down. It was making her a lot meaker. Less assertive, as if it was trying to make her submissive. Make her accept that he would never love her like that, and just lay down and breath her last breath. She still fought on, but not without fear. She spent less time around Chieftess and Rufus. The disease was making her hide. She spent more time with Whiskers as an excuse. And they would fly away. She would cough up a trail of daffodils to follow back, no matter where they went in Skylands.

No one ever knew that the flowers came from her. She still tried to appear put-together in public, as much as possible. But her bedroom was filled with that toxic flower. They were piled up in tiny mounts, stuffed in her closet and under loose floorboards. She swept up the ones she coughed up in Whiskers' stable, and tossed them all into compost heaps.

One day, Flynn told her that he proposed to Cali. He gave her all the details then too. These details, they were such a pain to her. They were almost like bullets, how every little descriptor seemed to tear a new hole in her somewhere. Yet they were pleasure. An idea at how things could have been. He mentioned the diamond ring. The orange sunset. The light breeze. The sand underneath their feet. He talked about him bending a knee and Cali covering her mouth and how he slid the ring over her gloved hand. She smiled through all that. Agreed to be a bridesmaid.

When he left that day, she coughed up whole flowers. With leaves and stalks and all. And she did not stop after a couple, she coughed up enough to form a bouquet. It was appropriate for her, the bridesmaid. That was who she really was. Was it not? She told herself to be happy for Cali.

It took every ounce of her strength to fight the disease's lies. How her heart was filled with envy and hate, how her cowardice made her dig her own grave. But the disease made her a coward! Or did it? Doubt seeped into her heart, and it only created larger flowers for her to cough up. The daffodils never stopped. Her throat was constantly dry. Irrational thoughts tried to reason themselves in her head, and like a sucker she bought them. She was a coward, her cowardice only enhanced itself through the disease.

She helped Cali with the preparations, almost like a way to atone for her cowardice. She helped to choose a lovely little dress. It was a dress made for adventurers like her, because it allowed for a lot of movement. Made of cotton and silk, it was glittery gold, and the silk gave it a swishy feel whenever she twisted and turned. It was just the right thing to go dancing in. Tessa got a new dress too, but it was a dress which looked best when worn standing still. It was a pale yellow. Lovely, but not beautiful. Sleeveless, form-fitting, and it complemented the blossoms she was growing in her lungs.

The days were blurring together. Every day, she would either accompany Flynn or Cali in planning their wedding, or she would busy herself with her duties as the Chieftess. It was selfish of her. She was selfish, or at least she thought so. She was about to die, yet she would not name an heir to the village. She was going to croak, yet she refused to look Whiskers in the eye. Was all this behavior on her, or were they all side effects of the disease? It ate at her. Bigger flowers. More painful coughs.

It all ended the day before the wedding. She found the speech she wanted to give Flynn, all those months ago, when she only coughed out petals. Long ago, she had given up on curing the disease. Then, she only sought to prolong the inevitable. But she was coughing stalks up regularly now. Dried leaves were being forced out of her lungs, and roots have wrapped themselves around all her dozens of bronchioles. The pollen was the worst of it. A bisexual flower, every blossom produced some of it. Her alveoli suffered. Breathing was now a chore because fate handed her a bisexual breed. The taste of chlorophyll and petals were permanently in her mouth. Mixed and ingrained in her saliva.

She was still unsure about how hanahaki affected brain chemicals, but it had to affect it in some form. Since becoming infected, her feelings got more and more muted until the became a dull ache. To try and feel them only resulted in sharp coughs. It was hopeless to think she could ever feel okay again. Her sense of hope had been extinguished from a blazing forest to a mere spark. The flowers bloomed above the ashes. At this point, they were far too rooted in her for her to weed them out. Her heart could never feel emotion as naturally as before. From now on, she would always be muted and submissive, for the flowers made her that way.

She contemplated her options every day. Shall she give in? Shall she hold out? The wedding was her main reason for living. The Ancients know, she wanted to feel happy for Flynn and Cali. The day before the big day, she realised she could not bear to watch it. Her dress was starched in the corner, Flynn and Cali expect her to walk down the isle proudly and later catch the bouquet. Yellow roses though. They would toss her yellow roses instead of red. Even if she caught it, who would she wed? She wanted to be there, but she could not. She would not. Selfish, selfish, but it was self-preservation.

She looked at her bedroom floor. Every inch of the place was covered in yellow petals. Even the closest were stuffed with daffodils and the bookshelves were lined with broken stems. What a place for her to fade away, but she supposed it was tragic, in a way. With a final heave and cough, she forced a bloody bud right out of her. And with a gasp, she fell for real. Allowing those sharp, painful feelings to finally ruin her fully.


End file.
